EMIL LASK ON JUDGMENT AND TRUTH

DINA EMUNDTS

Emil Lask died in 1915 in World War I. At the time he was far from havingcompleted his intended project in philosophy. With the exception of his disserta-tion on Fichte and his Habilitation on the Philosophy of Right, supervised byRickert and Windelband, he had published two works: The Logic of Philosophyand the Doctrine of Categories (1911) and The Doctrine of Judgment (1912).1These two investigations are meant to give the preliminary sketch of his wholesystem of philosophy. The system, however, was never completed. Besides amanuscript of lectures on Plato from 191112, we have only three other drafts ofworksthese were written during 1912 and 1914. The editor of the collectedworks, Lasks student Eugen Herrigel, published these drafts in 1924 under thetitles On the System of Logic, On the System of Philosophy, and On the System ofScience.2 It seems to be obvious that Lask waslike almost all Neo-Kantiansofthe opinion that we have to first of all reconsider Kants Critique of Pure Reasonand that we thereby get a new basis for a whole system of philosophy.

In my paper I want to focus on The Doctrine of Judgment, which I take to be oneof the most original and interesting theories of judgment and truth during that time

1 All quotations from Lask are taken from Emil Lask. Gesammelte Schriften, Eugen Herrigel (ed.),Vorwort, Emil Lask. Gesammelte Schriften, 3 vols, vol I (Tbingen, Germany: J.C.B. Mohr, 192324) XVIIXXII. References are to the volume and page number of this edition. Translations are mine.

2 The relation between these drafts and The Logic of Philosophy and the Doctrine of Categories (II,1182) and The Doctrine of Judgment (II, 283463) is not at all clear. Heinrich Rickert, Persnli-ches Geleitwort, Emil Lask. Gesammelte Schriften, 3 vols, vol 1, ed. Eugen Herrigel (Tbingen,Germany: J.C.B. Mohr, 1923: VXVI) XV and Herrigel (1923): XIXf., see a subjective shift in thelast two drafts from 1913 onwards. Against this see for example, Uwe B. Glatz, Emil Lask.Philosophie im Verhltnis zu Weltanschauung, Leben und Erkenntnis (Wrzburg, Germany: Knig-shausen & Neumann, 2001). I am not able to discuss this issue here. In this paper I will not refer tothe last drafts.

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even though, so far as I know, the only people who refer to it are Heidegger,3Cassirer,4 and Lasks teacher, Rickert.5 My paper is divided into three parts. First,I will discuss what I take to be Lasks idea of logic in general. Second, I willpresent Lasks theory of judgment and discuss some of its consequences. Third, Iwill concentrate on one aspect of this theory, namely, the concept of truth.

I. LASKS IDEA OF LOGIC

According to Lask, Kants Copernican revolution leads to a new understandingof logic. Before Kant, logic consisted simply in formal logicthat is, in a logicwhich abstracts from all content of cognition and considers only the forms of therelation of cognitions to one another, that is, the forms of judgments and syllo-gisms. But Kant, the story goes, discovered a new domain of logic, namelytranscendental logic. Transcendental logic does not abstract from all content butrather considers what we can know a priori about objects. While formal logic isfully general, that is, it contains rules which are taken to be valid without anyrestriction to its object, transcendental logic is specific in that it considers onlywhat is or can be an object for us.

Attributing this rough characterization of logic to Lask is to maintain that he issiding with Kant, since this is how Kant himself introduces his transcendentallogic.6 But while I think it is true that Lask follows Kant in the very generalcharacterization of logic, Lask understands transcendental logic in his own spe-cific way. First of all, Lask identifies what he takes to be Kants contribution tologic entirely with the so-called Copernican revolution. In other words, for Laskall the other claims Kant makes in his theoretical philosophy can be reduced toKants initial discovery of transcendental logic. The Transcendental Aesthetic aswell as the Dialectic arein a modified wayintegrated directly into the logic.But this is not the only point where Lask distances himself from Kant. Let memention and comment briefly on two crucial points concerning Lasks under-standing of transcendental logic:

3 See esp. Martin Heidegger, Neuere Forschungen ber Logik, (first published 1912), MartinHeidegger. Gesamtausgabe, vol 1, Frhe Schriften (191216), ed. V. Klostermann (Frankfurt amMain: Klostermann, 1978) 1743: 32ff. For Heideggers relation to Lask see Theodore Kisiel, Whystudents of Heidegger will have to read Emil Lask, Man and World 28 (1995): 197240.

4 Ernst Cassirer, Erkenntnistheorie nebst den Grundfragen der Logik, Jahrbcher der Philosophie 1(1913): 159.

5 Husserl occasionally mentions Lask in his manuscripts. See Karl Schuhmann and Barry Smith, TwoIdealisms: Lask and Husserl, Kant-Studien, 83 (1993): 44866.

6 Immanuel Kant, Kritik der reinen Vernunft (Critique of Pure Reason), A55/B79. References to theKritik der reinen Vernunft are to the standard pagination of the first (1781) and second (1787)editions, indicated as A and B, respectively.

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1. The first point concerns the understanding of the categories. Lask presents hisview of this topic in The Logic of Philosophy and the Doctrine of Categories. Theleading motive behind his rewriting of Kants Analytic is the conviction that Kantdid not reach his intended aim of demonstrating the validity of the categories. Wemight say, in a Laskian spirit, that in order to argue for the validity of the categories,Kant pointed out only that the material of our cognition is actually formedaccording to them. But this is not sufficient. On the contrary, the categoriesthemselves must be cognized as logically valid forms.7 Thus Lask articulates hisown transcendental philosophy as importantly distinct from Kants. Specifically,Lask differentiates between two levels of transcendental logic.8 At the first level weconsider what is given to us as an object with regard to the way it is categoricallyformed.9 This consideration leads us to the categories of being, substance, andcausality.10 It also presupposes that we differentiate between form and matter as twodistinct elements of cognition, whereas the sensible given is an absolute unity ofform and matter.11 We thus abstract from the original unity of the given objects. Atthe second level, the categories acquired at the first level must themselves becognized as something valid.12 It is due to them that the sensibly given is an object.

7 Lask argues more precisely that Kant lacks the means to give a basis for his own project of transcen-dental philosophy. By restricting the categories to what is given to us sensibly Kant denies the logicalconditions of his own critique of reason (verleugnet die logischen Bedingungen seiner eigenenVernunftkritik), II 263. In other words: For Lask the question of the validity of the categories cannotbe answered through the question about the domain of their applicability; rather, it must be treated asa logical topic. A discussion of this critique of Kants approach might begin with a discussion aboutKants claims concerning the restriction of the categories. But such a discussion is not my aim here.What I just called Lasks initial idea is, of course, by no means new. That Kant must justify hisphilosophical investigation by showing that there are synthetic judgments a priori which do not referto the sensibly given is a well-known idea dating back to the earliest reception of Kants criticalphilosophy. The thesis that Lask here revisits Fichtes criticism is argued for by Glatz (2001): 41.

8 This thesis leads Lask to differentiate between a transcendental logic of the categories of being anda transcendental logic of philosophical categories. Whereas the categories of being are the formsaccording to which pure material is formed, the philosophical categories are the forms that have thecategories themselves as material. The highest philosophical category is the category of validity.

9 See II, 81.10 It should be noted that I am simplifying Lasks theory here. For Lask the category of being

determines the area of the sensibly given (he thus calls it Gebietskategorie) while the othercategories in this area fall under that category.

11 Like the distinction between intuition and concepts for Kant, the distinction between form andmatter for Lask has to be understood as a non-reducible basic distinction. But this distinction doesnot give us any specific category. To get the specific categories we have to evaluate how matter isindeed formed.

12 Note that on Lasks view this theory allows us to establish a real system of philosophy because wecannot only investigate the theoretical categories but also the aesthetic and ethical categories. Theidea of a system is discussed by Angelica Nuzzo, Logik und System bei Hegel und Lask,Systemphilosophie als Selbsterkenntnis. Hegel und der Neukantianismus, ed. Hans Friedrich Fulda

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Thus they are the forms of an object in general and as such they are valid forms orvalues. While the operation at the first level is empirically based because weconsider what is actually given to us,13 the operation at the second level is a purephilosophical reflection in which we become aware of values. With this operationLask intends to avoid a solely psychological foundation of the categories. Thevalidity of the categories cannot be deduced from the fact that they are the forms ofwhat is given to us, but they are in themselves valid forms which we have toacknowledge. Though these forms still refer to something that is formed by them,that is, to the matter of cognition, they can be treated as non-sensible things.14 Whatis important for Lask is that these logical forms of an object are not subject-dependent. They are not forms of our thoughts, not subjective or human forms ofhow things must be determined by us. When we acknowledge that they are valid, wecan also see that a given object contains a value because it is formed by them.Containing a value means something like the following: The given objectcontains the standard (Mastab) of what can be said truly about it. With this we havealmost reached the theory of judgment. But there is still another point that should bementioned in order to indicate how Lask understood the Copernican revolution.

2. The second point that should be brought up here concerns the relationshipbetween formal and transcendental logic. Transcendental logic treats of the formsof an object while formal logic treats of the forms of judgments and syllogisms.Lask neither separates these two domains of logic so that we have simply twokinds of logic, nor does he take formal logic to be prior to or independent oftranscendental logic. Rather, transcendental logic is said to be prior to formal logicin at least three senses: (1) It is prior in a genetic sense: As we will see Lask takesthe judgment to be an artificial reproduction of our understanding of formedmatter.15 (2) Transcendental logic is prior to formal logic because it is the aim ofthe whole of logic:16 What we should be interested in is what makes a judgmenttrue or false and the standard of this must be the object itself, that is, the topic of

and Christian Krijnen (Wrzburg, Germany: Knigshausen & Neumann, 2007): 13358; DietrichHeinrich Kerler, Kategorienprobleme. Eine Studie im Anschlu an Emil Lasks, Logik derPhilosophie. Archiv fr systematische Philosophie. Neue Folge der Philosophischen Monatshefte18 (1912): 16, points out that Lask tried to extend the domain of logic.

13 See II, 60.14 By taking the categories to be something non-sensible, which constitute their own part of transcen-

dental logic, Lask seems to make a kind of Hegelian move. By Hegelian move I mean one thattakes the categories to be logical objects. The basis of this analogy between Lask and Hegel is thatLask tries to reject a subjective understanding of the categories. But the Laskian move differs fromHegels because for Lask there is no purely logical way to acquire or develop the categories.

15Artificial reproduction is my rendering of knstliche Nachbildung.

16The domain of the objective-logical will be [. . .] the real ultimate aim for the theoretical domain,(Die Region des Gegenstndlich-Logischen wird [. . .] das eigentlich letzte Ziel auf theoretischemGebiet) II, 287.

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transcendental logic. (3) Transcendental logic is prior in a logical sense: For Laska theory of judgment must be founded in transcendental philosophy because thecontent of a judgment cannot be explained without taking into account the relationto objects. In other words, neither a grammatical theory of judgments nor a theorywhich considers solely the relations between judgments is sufficient to explainwhat a judgment really consists in.

One might easily misunderstand these claims about the relation between tran-scendental and formal logic. They do not rule out but rather still allow the claimthat formal logic is more extensive than transcendental logic. The principle ofidentity, for instance, is a form of every judgment independent of its content. Butthis principle is not valid in the sense of being an objective form. It is a rule whichwe only establish for our formal operations involving judgments and not some-thing that makes them true or false. Furthermore, Lasks claims about the relationbetween transcendental and formal logic do not imply that we could not haveformal logic without transcendental logic. Indeed, if this implication was to bedrawn it would stand in tension with Lasks historical thesis that Kant discoveredtranscendental logic after a long history of formal logic beginning with Aristotle.But how can this be if we have to understand transcendental logic to be prior toformal logic? According to Lask, what logicians before Kant were missing was anunderstanding of the object as a logical topic. Though they also took the object asformed-matter complex as the standard of the truth-value of their judgments, theylacked a logical theory about the object and thus an explanation as to how anobject can be the standard of the truth-value of logical statements.17 With respectto this explanation their theory was incomplete.

Let me end this explication of Lasks account of transcendental logic with a hintas to how Lask relates to Kant here. Concerning the first point, that is, theunderstanding of categories, we can say that Lask modifies or even reversesKants theory. To put it simply, Lask gives forms of objects as such an objectivestatus. We can guess that this is meant to establish a conception of truth that is freefrom any of the subjective and psychological connotations of which Kant wasaccused.18 Concerning the second point, that is, the priority of transcendentallogic, the relation to Kant is not as obvious. One might say that Lask here reallyrevisits a Kantian idea because Kant also takes transcendental logic to be the onlyway to explain how a judgment about something can have an object at all as a

17 II, 29. I use the expression truth-value here in the following sense: Something has a truth-valueif (and only if) it is true or false or valid or non-valid. Lask thinks that that what makes a propositiontrue or false is the object. The object also contains truth or a value of truth but this will benon-oppositional, that is, it is not true or false or valid or non-valid (thus I do not refer to it astruth-value).

18 This leads (in my view) to some problems, which I will discuss at the end of my paper.

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criterion of truth. But it has to be noted that Lask wants to distance himself fromKant with respect to the interpretation of the priority of transcendental logic. Hethinks that we must conceive of this priority in a stronger sense, or at least take itmore seriously. If transcendental logic is prior in the way just spelled out (i.e., ifjudgments, as a part of formal logic, are reproductions of objects which areformed by logical forms), then we must reject Kants metaphysical deduction, thatis, the way in which Kant introduces the categories. Since the metaphysicaldeduction claims that we can derive the categories via the table of judgments, itfails to capture the priority of transcendental logic.19 By contrast, for Lask it has tobe shown that the constructs of formal logic are the products of the reproductionof the object. This is what Lask claims in the Doctrine of Judgment:

It is therefore the main issue of the following investigation to make obvious within the doctrine ofjudgment the devaluation of nonobjective constructs which is connected to the extension oftranscendental logic.20

To reach this aim Lask must show that the object is the standard of the truth-valuesof judgments. Let us now turn to this doctrine in more detail.

II. LASK ON JUDGMENT

In the Doctrine of Judgment Lask presents a complex structure of judgments,which is by no means easy to comprehend. One explanation for the difficultiesmay be the provisional character of this writingthis is stressed by Lask him-self.21 Another reason which makes it difficult for us to understand his theory liesin the fact that Lask tries to relate his theory to other theories of judgment of thetime, especially those of Husserl,22 on the one hand, and Rickert and Windelband,on the other. Though Lask appropriates a great deal from those discussions,ultimately he is of the opinion that all post-Kantian theories are misguided

19 II, 380. The rejection of the metaphysical deduction is found in many philosophers who think ofthemselves in a broad sense as Kantians and Neo-Kantians, but Lasks reason for this rejection isquite different from the reasons given by many others.

20Es ist demgem die Hauptangelegenheit dieser Abhandlung, die mit der transzendentalen Erweit-erung der Logik verbundene Herabdrckung der nichtgegenstndlichen Gebilde in der Lehre vomUrteil hervortreten zu lassen, II, 288.

21 II, 285.22 Lask studied Husserls Logische Untersuchungen (Logical investigations) extensively, but also his

Philosophie als strenge Wissenschaft (Philosophy as Rigorous Science), Logos 1 (1911):289341. See Lask, III, 252. For discussion of Lasks and Husserls respective influence, seeSchuhmann and Smith (1993); Steven Galt Crowell, Husserl, Lask and the Idea of TranscendentalLogic, Edmund Husserl and the Phenomenological Tradition. Essays in Phenomenology, ed. R.Sokolowski (Washington, DC: Catholic U of America P, 1989) 6385.

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because they take the truth-value of a judgment to be something that depends onthe active subject, whereas he wants to explain that and how the object is thestandard of truth.23 Thus Lasks main idea is that we can rehabilitate the pre-Kantianthought that the object is the standard of the truth of our judgments under theconditions of transcendental philosophy. In view of this we can say that the task ofthe Doctrine of Judgment is to consider the consequences, for our theory ofjudgment, of the Copernican revolution, that is, of the conception of transcendentallogic presented above. In this previous discussion we find the main concern ofLasks theory of judgment: Lask claims that the object, which is the standard of thetruth of our judgments, is determined by objectively valid forms. However, to judgeis an act of the subject. Thus a judgment is part of formal logic. This raises thequestion of how we can understand something which is independent of ourjudgment, namely the object, as the standard of the truth-values of our judgments.In other words: It seems that we must separate the domain of judgments as a domainof subjectivity from the domain of objects which is totally independent of thesubject. But in order to explain the truth-values of judgments we have to go beyondthe domain of judgments and look at the object itself.24 Thus we have to bridge thetwo domains of logic. Since the object is understood as something totally indepen-dent of the subject, the bridge between the two domains has to be found within thedomain of judgments. And this means that we have to consider what a judgmentreally consists in. The Doctrine of Judgment tries to give an answer to this question.

In a judgment something is predicated of something and thereby the latter isdetermined as something. The predication itself is independent of our act ofjudging. With respect to these predications Lask wants to argue for the thesis thattheir structure is meta-grammatical, that is, he wants to argue that there is anoriginal form of our predications which is not necessarily in accordance with theirgrammatical structure.25 The reason for having a meta-grammatical structure is that

23 With respect to Rickert this seems to be uncontroversial. But even with respect to Husserl it can bedefended. See Schuhmann and Smith (1993). It has to be noted that the interpretation of Lask whichconstitutes the basis for the comparison to Husserl in Schuhmann and Smith is different from myinterpretation. In my view, Schuhmann and Smith do not take seriously enough the point that forLask the object is not pure matter which is formed by a subject (see e.g., p. 460). This means thataccording to my interpretation Lask places much more distance between himself and Husserl invirtue of taking truth to be something completely subject-independent. See Lask II, 425.

24 Cassirer rightly pointed out that this is the topic of Lasks Doctrine of Judgments. See Cassirer(1913): 6f. However, Cassirer presents Lasks theory in a tendentious way, which is meant to bringout the deficits of South-Western Neo-Kantianism. The main idea is that although Lask tries toovercome Rickerts problems, he cannot solve them, but due to his considerations it becomesobvious where these problems lie and how serious they are. The problems which Cassirer sees arethese: the subjective connotation of the concept value (Wert) instead of validity (Geltung), and theproblem with the thing-in-itself (p. 10), which I will discuss in the third part of my paper.

25 II, 321ff.

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the predication is based in the way we grasp an object. To grasp an object means tounderstand something as something. As transcendental philosophy shows, accord-ing to Lask, we grasp the object by pulling apart the logical forms and what isformed by them. This allows us to rebuild our understanding of an object in alogically structured way. More precisely we rebuild the object in a relational way byattributing a logical form to something that is formed by this logical form. Thestructure of the predication must represent this sort of understanding. Thus a termwhich represents determinable matter must function as the subject; a categoricalform which is to determine this subject must function as the predicate. Note thatthe subject-term is not completely undetermined because we cannot think of some-thing as totally undetermined. However, it is undetermined in a certain way.

What this means can be shown with respect to three basic forms of predication:When we want to determine something as a thing with a quality, the meta-grammatical structure is to qualify a non-qualified somethingfor example:There is something which is a rose and which is red. With this form of predicationit is obvious that we determine something that we take as not sufficiently deter-mined, namely the matter of our determination, in a categorical way. When wewant to determine something as a causal relation, the meta-grammatical structureis such that what we want to determine, for example, a and b, is the subject, andthe category of causality with which we determine a and b is the predicate. Themeta-grammatical expression is: a and b are causally related.26 The meta-grammatical structure of an existential judgment is in accordance with the con-ventionally grammatical one; for example: This rose exists.27

We can understand the meta-grammatical predication as a proposition if wethink of a proposition as something that is structured logically and has a truth-value but not if we think of it as something that implies an explicit judgment or anentertained thought. The meta-grammatical predication can be valid or non-valid.28 A predication is valid when the predicate and the subject fit together andnon-valid when they do not. This depends on the object or on how things really26 II, 338ff.27 Note that there may be a logical order of these forms of predication which would follow the

hierarchy of the categories. Thus we could link the different predications in the following way:There is something existing which is a rose and which is red and this thing and another thing arecausal related etc. It should also be mentioned that the category of existence is a special categorybecause, as noted earlier, it determines the whole area of the sensibly given.

28 Lask prefers to speak of conformity to truth and contrariety to truth because he wants to makeclear that truth-values are dependent on the object. He also speaks of a value and non-value(Unwert), the quality of a value etc. (II, 298). The formulation to be valid and to be non-validwith respect to predications is mine. I think that it can help clarify some aspects of Lasks theory.However, in order to show that this way of talking is legitimate, one would have to discuss the waythe distinction between Wert und Gltigkeit was understood in Lasks time (I take it that Laskwants to avoid the claim that there is a real distinction), see II, 15.

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are. A valid meta-grammatical predication represents the relation which can befound in the object, a non-valid meta-grammatical predication presents a relationwhich is not realized.29 How this is to be understood I will explain in the third partof my paper in detail. For now it is sufficient to accept that for Lask there are validand non-valid predications.

The thesis that Lask bases on these considerations is that our judgments have afundamental structure which represents the logical determinations of objects.However, this representation is indirect. The fundamental structure does notrepresent the object itself but the way we grasp the object. Thus by grasping theobject we disintegrate and rebuild it and this leads to the original or meta-grammatical predication. With this thesis Lask accomplishes at least two thingswith respect to his claim that the object is the standard of the truth-values of ourjudgments. (1) If the meta-grammatical predication represents the logical deter-minations of the object, then we may suppose that its truth-value depends on theadequacy of the meta-grammatical predication to the object. This leaves open howwe know about the truth-values of the meta-grammatical predications. This iswhat I want to discuss in the third part of my paper. (2) The other consequence ofLasks thesis is a practical maxim. If we want to know whether a judgment is trueor false, we should formulate the judgment in its meta-grammatical form. Con-ventionally formed judgments can be reduced to their meta-grammatical structure.For instance, a is the cause of b can be reduced to a and b are causally related.By reducing conventional judgments to their original meta-grammatical predica-tion we overcome the artificiality of our grammatical structures and come closerto what an object really is. This means that we must think of meta-grammaticalstructures in two senses: On the one hand, as the basis for all judgments that wemake and, on the other hand, as the manner in which we have to formulatejudgments when we want to evaluate their truth-value, that is, in order to evaluatetruth-values of judgments, we have to formulate them in a way which is meant topresent their original meta-grammatical structure. However, it is especially thefirst sense, namely the idea that the meta-grammatical structures are the basis forall judgments we make, that I will try to explain in what follows. Let us now focuson the question how we judge. For Lask to judge means to decide whether arelation between a subject and a predicate is valid or not valid. Thus we judgeabout the meta-grammatically structured entities. Or better: We judge whether theparts of the meta-grammatical structure hang together or not.30 Thus when we

29 One might wonder whether this conception of truth is not a very restricted one because alljudgments about, for instance, mythological-figures, seem to be false. But here we have to remem-ber that we are focusing on the question of how we judge something that is given to us sensibly thatis, a thing which stands under the category of being. Judgments about another domain of objectswould lead to another categorical framework.

30 II, 310.

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judge that the sun warms the stone or that the sun does not warm the stone, wejudge about a relation of the following form: The sun and the heat of the stone arecausally related.31 Note that although we can formulate this relation as a judgmentin its ordinary as well as in its meta-grammatical form (and we should reformulateour judgments in the meta-grammatical form for evaluating them), the relation isnot the result of our judging but underlies our judging. To judge is to refer to suchan underlying relation between a subject and a predicate. More precisely it is toendorse32 or reject a relation between the subject and the predicate. Rejecting therelation between the sun and the heat of the stone and the predicate arecausally related means to judge that the sun is not the cause of the heat of thestone. This can be expressed for example in the sentence: The sun does not warmthe stone. In contrast with a predication that has a meta-grammatical structurethis is the judgment in its grammatical or ordinary form. A negative judgment ofthis form is true if the meta-grammatical structure is not valid and false if themeta-grammatical structure is valid.33 But we have to be careful here: Lask doesnot concentrate on the difference between a thought and different expressions ofit. Instead he wants to argue mainly for a difference between the thought orcontent of our judgments and the relation about which we judge. This is in his eyesthe basic difference. To differentiate between the thought and the relation aboutwhich we judge is necessary if we want to explain why the thought can be takento be something subject-independent.34 In other words, it is important to notice thatLask does not identify the thought with the meta-grammatical predication but withwhat we judge. We judge about a relation of subject and predicate and thereby geta thought or a content of a judgment which we can express in different sentences.

31 Because causal relations are relations which determine the order of the related elements in only onedirection, we should say (more precisely) that we judge about the following: The sun and the heatof the stone are causally related in the order in which they are mentioned.

32 I translate Bejahung as endorsement and bejahen as to endorse.33 Actually with respect to the judgments that we make Lask prefers to say that they are correct and

incorrect (richtig oder falsch). Obviously he wants to stress the difference between the judgmentswe make and meta-grammatical predications, that is, to reserve truth for the meta-grammaticalpredication and for the object itself (one could think of this as a similarity to Heidegger). However,for two reasons I hesitate to follow Lask with respect to this vocabulary: (1) If we understood thewhole complex of meta-grammatical structure, thought and act, as the real structure of ajudgmentand that is indeed Lasks ideathen it would be correct to say that a judgment is trueor false. (2) Of course, Lask thinks also that due to the meta-grammatical structure we can judgetruly or falsely. Thus it seems to be natural to talk about true and false judgments. For these reasonsI use mostly true and false for richtig and falsch.

34 This is Lasks criticism of Husserl. In Lasks view it is not enough to claim that the thought issubject-independenta claim which he rightly attributes to Husserl. Rather, we must explain whythis is the case, and for this it is not sufficient to refer to the object.

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That we can separate the thought from our act of judging35 and take it to besomething independent of us is thus grounded in the fact that we judge about apredication whose validity does not depend on the subject.

Up to now we have discussed the meta-grammatical structure and the thoughtwhich we get as a result if we judge about this structure and which can beexpressed in different sentences. Because judging about a structure contains an actof endorsement or rejection we can now differentiate between three elements ofjudgments: the act, the result of our act, and the structure about which we judge.Since we judge about the meta-grammatical structure Lask calls the relation ofsubject and predicate primary object of our decision. The judgment is theproduct of these three elements: an act or decision to hold something true or nottrue (the act of judging), the something that we take to be true or not true (primaryobject of the act of judging or meta-grammatical structure), and the thought thatsomething is true or not true (the content of a judgment). The thought can beexpressed in different sentences. Thus we can say: We hit (treffen) the primaryobject when we endorse a valid relation between subject and predicate. Then ourjudgment is true.36 We also hit the primary object when we reject a non-validrelation. Then our judgment is also true. When we reject a valid relation we miss(or fail to capture) it and our judgment is false. Similarly, when we endorse anon-valid relation of subject and predicate.

We can depict these relations in the following Table 1. I add the object on theright side because it is the standard of valid or non-valid relations of our primaryobjects of the act of judging, though I have not yet discussed how this works.

35 Lask fully acknowledges that he took this idea from Bolzano and Husserl. See II, 425: [I]t is thehistorical merit of these logicians [Bolzano and Husserl] to have insisted on the possible separationof sensethe sentences themselvesfrom the real substrates. (es ist die historische Bedeutungdieser Logiker gewesen, auf die Lsbarkeit des Sinnesder Stze an sichvon den realenSubstraten gedrungen zu haben).

36 As I explained above with respect to judgments that we make, Lask would prefer to say that they arecorrect and incorrect.

Table 1.

The judgment The objectThe act of judging Content of the judgment

(thought) that can beexpressed in differentsentences

Primary object of the act ofjudging (the meta-grammatical structure ofjudgments that is a relationof subject and predicate)

The standard of thetruth values ofour judgments

To hit or to miss True or false Valid or non-valid

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With this theory of judgment Lask claims that the object is the standard of thetruth-values of our judgments. Let me end the presentation of his theory bypointing out how Lask tries to distance himself from two other positions:

1. One position he wants to distance himself from is that we judge not aboutobjects but about judgments. This is the position of Rickert and Windelband.37 Onthis view, judgments are understood as a connection between representations viaa neutral copula.38 Thus we judge, for instance, about the judgment The sun is thecause of the heat in the stone. In Lasks view there are two problems with thistheory. First, if our judgments were about judgments, then we would have to thinkof their truth-values as at least somehow dependent on the subject because ajudgment is the product of an act of judging.39

Note that this shows that Lask not only wants to argue for the claim that truthis not our own creation but also for the claim that there really is something that wejudge to be true or not true. The second problem with Rickerts and Windelbandsposition concerns false judgments. If one understands a judgment as a result ofjudging about a judgment she must also consider false judgments as negations oftrue ones. This is because if our judgments were about representations linked bya neutral copula they could be wrong only if at the same time the correct inter-pretation of the neutrally linked representations consisted in the opposite. Thus afalse judgment would always presuppose a true one.40 Lask wants, on the contrary,to treat a false judgment as a genuine case of judgment. A false judgment meansthat we take something valid to be false or that we take something non-valid to betrue.41 Thus a false judgment is not merely a negation of a true one.

In opposing the position that we judge about judgments Lask maintains that thethought of a judgment is a product of our decision about the primary object. Therelation about which we judge is not a neutral relation of representations but it isa valid or non-valid predication. Furthermore, the resulting judgment is no neutralrelation of representations either, that is, it has no neutral copula. It is that weendorse or reject that a predicate is related to a subject. Thus our judgments arealways an endorsement or a rejection, that is, we judge that The rose is reallyred or The rose is not red. There may be some cases where we judge abouta judgment, but these cases are special because we first distance ourselves

37 Lask explicitly mentions Sigwart. However, I think we can also think of Rickert and Windelband asholding a position according to which judgments are the only bearer of truth-values.

38 A neutral copula is meant to be a copula which only connects subject and predicate without sayingthat this connection must be negated or affirmed. Or in other words, it is a sentence which is meantto be neutral with respect to its truth-value.

39 Lask argues on similar grounds against the primacy of practical reason, which Rickert had empha-sized (I, 159).

40 This is why Lask accuses this position of circularity.41 II, 301.

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artificially from taking an attitude and then judge about an artificially neutraljudgment.42

2. The second position from which Lask wants to distance himself can besummarized in the statement that we judge about facts.43 In some sense this ideais close to what Lask wants to argue for. Since he understands the object to havea logical form and not as being something beyond logic (as he thinks philosophersbefore Kant did), one might suppose that he would agree that we judge about facts.But what is, in his eyes, problematic with this position is that in this case onethinks of the objects themselves as a sort of proposition, that is, as something thatis true or false.44

For Lask, on the contrary, the objects are not true or false. Sensibly given thingsare formed matter, but they are given as complete wholes and we can experiencethem as such whereas all separation comes with our way of grasping them.45 Thisis the reason why Lask calls the whole domain of judgments a domain of artificialreproduction. It is us who, in judging, rebuild the objects in a relational way.46 Andonly by doing so does the question arise whether the relation is true or not, that is,whether the predicate fits the subject or not. Thus the artificial reproductionimplies an opposition. This is true for each element we differentiated as anelement of the judgment, that is, for the act of judging, the content of thejudgment, and the primary object of the act of judging. With respect to itscharacteristic as a reproduction, Lask takes the primary object to be less artificialthan the expressed judgments. The reason for this is simply that a judgmentrebuilds the object and that the primary objects are nearer to the object, that is,they are the first product of rebuilding the object. With respect to the point that allelements of our judgment consist in oppositions we can see that the basic oppo-sition is that of valid and non-valid predications. These are endorsed or rejected byus with the result being either a true or a false judgment. Thus all elements of ajudgment consist in an opposition and this separates the judgment from the object.The primary objects of the act of judging are meant somehow to bridge these42 II, 441.43 II, 391f. The claim that the direct object of a judgment is a state of affairs can be attributed to

Husserl.44 I disagree with Schuhmann and Smiths claim (in their 1993) that Lask ignores the material world

of things even though I think they are right to claim that, in contrast to Husserl, Lask thinks that therelation between non-cognitive experience and cognition is not something that can be completelyanalyzed.

45 As I will argue in the third part of my paper, Lask claims that our experiencing is different from ourgrasping things.

46 Or to put it more precisely, in grasping the object we rebuild the object in a relational way and theact of judging is an endorsement or rejection of this relation. Note that this is not to say that onlyin grasping the object do we acquire the categories as pure forms. This will be discussed in the thirdpart of my paper.

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separated domains. But what allows us to compare it with the object itself? Howdo we know whether a relation between subject and predicate is valid or non-valid? With these questions we reach Lasks theory of truth.

III. LASK ON TRUTH

To understand Lasks conception of truth we now have to focus on the objectand its relation to the primary object of the act of judging. More precisely we mustexplicate (1) what an object consists in and how the primary objects of the act ofjudging relate to it, and (2) how the object can be responsible for the truth-valueof the relation of subject and predicate and how we can know whether a relationis valid or not.

1. According to Lask what is given to us is not a pure manifold which wedetermine as an object. What is given is formed matter. The distinction betweenpure matter and forms is a distinction which is made by us. It is a distinction of ourthinking. However, this distinction itself does not fall within the domain ofjudgments. Judgments should rebuild the objects. Thus they presuppose the dif-ferent elements of form and matter and these elements cannot be their products.47It seems perhaps confusing that Lask wants, on the one hand, to claim that theform-matter distinction is made by us while he wants, on the other hand, to claimthat judgments presuppose this distinction. But here we have to recall the idea oftranscendental philosophy. Transcendental philosophy is prior to formal logic asthe domain of judgments. What we can do (as transcendental philosophers) is toacquire the forms of the objects as logical forms by considering what is given tous. We can acquire, for instance, the category of being or of causality. Becausethese categories are pure forms (not formed matter), the distinction between formand matter is made by us.48 The categories are logical values in the sense that theyare valid forms. With respect to them there cannot occur the question whether theyare either valid or non-valid. They are values as such. Thus they have what Laskcalls a non-oppositional character.49 Because the object is a complex of matterwhich is formed by these forms we can also say that the object itself has anon-oppositional value.50

47 Lask claims that the separation of the elements of the object occurs before the act of reproduction(cf. II, 422).

48 Thus it would be misguided to claim that all separations fall into the domain of judgments, thoughit is totally correct to claim that all oppositions are within this domain.

49 Something has an non-oppositional character if it is such that we cannot ask: Is it the case or is itnot? That is, it is in a domain where no oppositional truth-values can occur.

50 Thus in a way validity can be found in the fact of experience III, 67. At this point one may objecttwo things: (1) We cannot say that an object is formed by these forms because the object is anindistinguishable matter/form complex. This can be answered in the following way: Lasks thesis is

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Once we take into account this point about transcendental philosophy we canthen explain how the relations of a subject and a predicate are related to the object.By establishing the categories as in-themselves valid forms, we also acquire thebasis for our judgments: As we have seen, we judge about relations. The relata ofthese relations is an almost undetermined something on the one side and acategory on the other. We can understand this as building a relation between asingular term with which we refer to the object as formed matter and a categorywith which we try to determine how the formed matter is indeed formed. Becausethe categories are established by transcendental philosophy we can say that tran-scendental philosophy provides us with different possible predicates which can berelated to the subject-term. While the object as well as its logic, namely transcen-dental logic, is beyond the domain of oppositions, the reproduction of the objectas something relationally structured always has an oppositional character: Therelation is valid or non-valid.

2. To say that the object is the standard of the truth-values of the judgmentsseems now quite plausible. The relations are valid when they are in accordancewith how the matter is formed and non-valid when they are not. A valid relation isone that realizes or rebuilds the object in an adequate way. The judgment that a andb are causally related is true if the relation a, b and causality is valid and therelation is valid when a and b do indeed stand in the relation of causality. But sofar this explanation leaves open the question how we know that the relation is anadequate way of rebuilding the object. It is with respect to this question that Laskstheory becomes obscure. With respect to this question, we can only find hints ofan answer. First of all, Lask claims that we can reconstruct the object in itsoriginally non-oppositional character as the standard of the relation we judge, ifwe become aware of the gap between our reproduction and the object itself.51More precisely, when we endorse a valid predication we can abstract from its

that we can somehow acquire the categories by considering what objects are. Thus we can say thatobjects are formed by the categories. (2) If we can say with respect to objects that they have anon-oppositional characterwhy can we not say the same with respect to the primary objects of theact of judging? Lasks thesis is that with respect to our reconstructions of form and matter thequestion does arise whether these reconstructions are valid or non-valid because we decide how toreconstruct the object. But this is not the case with respect to the object itself. The object is, as Lasklikes to put it, the standard of what is valid or non-valid.

51The objects are transformed into objects of judgments, that is, into things about whose positive ornegative qualities we have to make a decision. But when we are aware of this, then it is alwayspossible to reconstruct the originally non-oppositional structure as the standard of objects ofjudgments. (Die Gegenstnde werden zu Urteilsobjekten umgearbeitet, d.h. zu Gebilden, berderen positive oder negative Qualitt eine Entscheidung aussteht. Aber ist dies einmal durchschaut,so ist eine Wiederherstellung der ursprnglichen gegensatzlosen Struktur als des Mastabes derUrteilsobjekte jederzeit mglich.) II, 374; compare 365/66 and 438.

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relational character and thereby easily go beyond the limits of our judgments.52 Wethen cognize the object in another way, and this experience reveals to us the truthof our judgments. In order to realize this idea Lask must introduce a form ofcognition that has a totally different character from judgments. Here we do notactively determine the object but rather passively receive it.53

But how can these claims about another form of cognition be used to substan-tiate the claim that objects are, for us, the standard of the truth-values of thepredications? As far as I see there are two ways to explicate the underlying idea:

1. One might think that Lask alludes to Husserls conception of evidence.54Then the answer to the question of how we know whether a relation betweensubject and predicate is valid would be roughly this: When we judge, that is, whenwe endorse or reject a relation between subject and predicate, this relation ismeant to rebuild the object.55 Thus our judgments provide us with an expectationconcerning the object. We address the given object with an expectation which canbe satisfied or disappointed. The satisfaction of our expectation reveals to us the

52While the negative judgment remains content with highlighting the construct which departs fromthe object and is contrary to truth as such, the construct that accords with the truth and is present ina correct endorsement allows us to reconstruct the object, once we subtract the reproductivestructural overlap. Thus, only endorsement stands in the immediate service of the final end, namelythe adoption of the object. From this adoption, a single step leads us to the transcendental cognitionwhich is beyond the domain of judgments. This cognition (as well as the non-oppositional truth)stands beyond conformity to truth and contrariety to truth, even more, beyond Yes and No.(Whrend das negative Urteil sich damit begngt, das vom Gegenstand abweichende wahrheits-widrige Gefge als solches zu kennzeichnen, lt sich von dem in der richtigen Bejahung vorschwe-benden wahrheitsgemen Gefge aus, nach Abzug der nachbildlichen Strukturberdeckung, derGegenstand wiederherstellen. So steht ausschlielich die Bejahung im unmittelbarsten Dienst desEndzwecks, der Gegenstandsbemchtigung. Von ihr fhrt ein einziger Schritt zum urteilsjenseitig-transzendentallogischen Erkennen, das, wie die bergegenstzliche Wahrheit jenseits von Wahr-heitsgemheit und Wahrheitswidrigkeit, selbst jenseits von Ja und Nein steht.) (II, 438f).

53 Lask calls this sort of cognition Hingabe II, 396. Compare II, 190. Here again Lask wants toavoid the claim that we as subjects are responsible for the truth-values: We do not make the truth butrather find it (see II, 422).

54 See Edmund Husserl, Gesammelte Werke. Husserliana. Vol 19, Logische Unterschungen, 2 vol,Untersuchungen zur Phnomenologie und Theorie der Erkenntnis, ed. Ursula Panzer (The Hague:Nijhoff, 1984): VI. Logische Untersuchung (VI. Logical Investigation), published first in 190001.The conception of evidence is also picked up by Rickert and others. See Heinrich Rickert, ZweiWege der Erkenntnistheorie, Kant-Studien 14 (1909): 169228, and Heidegger (1978): 40. SinceHeidegger claimed in Sein und Zeit (first published 1927) that Lasks Doctrine of Judgment isstrongly influenced by Husserls investigation into evidence and truth it seems to be the case thatHeidegger would support the first reading of Lask presented here, that is, the reading which refersto the conception of evidence. See Martin Heidegger, Sein und Zeit (1st ed. 1927), 17nd ed.(Tbingen, Germany: Max Niemeyer Verlag, 1993): 218.

55 Note that according to Lask one must treat endorsement and rejection differently. More precisely wereally rebuild the object only in cases where we endorse a valid relation. A rejection, on the contrary,cannot be confirmed by experience. See II, 438f. cited earlier.

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adequacy of the predication. Though this idea seems to be quite attractive, it is inthe end not available within a Laskian framework. This is so for the followingreason: This idea would presuppose that an object is more or less structured in thesame way as our predications, and that a judgment is indeed able to grasp theobject as it is. But that is not at all what Lask wanted to claim. According to Laskit is not even possible to identify the different elements of form and matter in theobject.56 The object is not a relation of matter and form but is a formed-mattercomplex or, as Lask likes to put it, simply a formed matter.57 Thus this explanationwould lose the main point of Lasks theory of the object.58 For this reason we mustthink of another explanation.

2. We have to go back to the belief that we do not judge about the object butabout the primary object of the act of judging, that is, about a rebuilding of theobject in a relational way. I think the only possibility available to Lask is thefollowing: We judge about the primary objects. The relation about which we judgeis in itself valid or non-valid. We cannot and must not evaluate theoreticallywhether it is valid or non-valid. But we can experience its truth by abstractingfrom the relational understanding. By judging we endorse or reject the relationand thereby we do experience if it is valid or not. This is what Lask claims:

Between the elements [of subject and predicate] grasped thus consists always as such conformityto truth or contrariety to truth, and there is nothing else for the experience to do than to experiencein the right way via endorsing or rejecting the things which were made immanent as that which theyreally are, that is, what they are in their quasi-transcendent way of being.59

Why is it possible to experience the truth of the relation between subject andpredicate? My guess is that we are able to experience whether relations are validor not because we are just in the possession of the truth. This is so because before

56 Lask is not very clear on this point. He claims, for instance, that within the object there are the sameelements as there are in the predication (II, 365). But at the same time he claims that the originalstructure of the object is fundamentally unknown to us (II, 418).

57 There are a lot of problems concerning the formulation simply a formed matter. One might thinkthat this means that form and matter are inseparable. But this is not true because we do separate formand matter (we distinguish form and matter and we reconstruct the object as a form-matter relation).However, we can say things like the following: (1) Form and matter are not separable so that wehave two autonomous elements, and (2) form and matter are not separable in two elements withoutdestroying what an object really is.

58 In addition, given that interpretation it would be unconvincing that Lask wants to distance himselffrom Husserl and that he gives so much attention to what he calls the primary object of our decision.

59 (Zwischen den so herausgegriffenen Elementen besteht immer an sich Wahrheitsgemheit undWahrheitswidrigkeit, und es bleibt dem Erleben nur brig, durch Bejahen und Verneinen dieimmanentgemachten Gefge richtig als das zu erleben, was sie an sich, d.h. quasitranszendenterWeise sind.) II, 422.

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we judge, we experience the object in a way that reveals to us how it is. We havea special sort of knowledge about the object, even though we cannot explain orexpress60 it because whenever we try to we cannot help but rebuild and therebydestroy the fullness and unity of the object as a formed-matter complex.61 Never-theless, we can trust our experience of valid or non-valid predications by abstract-ing from their relational structure because we just have to recall our original sort ofcognizing the object. Thus we experience the relation of subject and predicate astrue, but we can only experience it as true because we recall what we cognizedbefore grasping the object in a relational way. Maybe this can be understood as aninterpretation of a Platonic idea of recollection despite the fact that for Lask we donot cognize the forms without matter but the forms in the formed-matter complex.62

I cannot discuss this proposal in detail here. And I do not even want to claim thatthe idea that we can experience the truth of a relation of subject and predicate isa very convincing one. I think at least in the Doctrine of Judgment it remains quiteobscure. What is clear is that Lask thinks that we cannot save the convincing ideathat the object is the standard of the truth of our judgments without introducing akind of cognizing other than that of discursive understanding, that is, a kind ofcognizing which lies beyond the realm of judging. This is not only the case withrespect to the question of how we know that a relation of subject and predicateis true or not. Rather, there is, as far as I can see, also another case which isdependent on the idea of a special kind of cognizing. As pointed out in the first partof my paper, Lask claims that the categories are in themselves valid forms and notsubjective concepts with which we determine the manifold as an object. This wasmeant to give a non-psychological interpretation of Kants categories. But thequestion will arise as to how we can know that these categories are valid. It cannotbe argued that they are the conditions for us to have an objective synthesis of themanifold (which is roughly Kants idea). Nor can we claim that they are theconditions which make our judgments in natural science valid (which is in the coreof the Neo-Kantian answer to the problem in the Marburg school).63 The first claim

60 This is why Cassirer argues that Lask inherits the problem of the thing-in-itself (Cassirer 1913:10ff). It is correct that Lask has the tendency to take the object as something which is beyond thedomain of understanding and therefore the question arises as to how to take it as the standard oftruth. But Cassirer ignores the fact (1) that Lask introduces another kind of cognition which goesbeyond the domain of judgment. He also ignores (2) that the reason for Lasks move is that Laskwants to refute the idea that the object is simply a relational connection, as Cassirer himself claimed(p. 13).

61 One might wonder about the sense in which Lask can talk about objects at allbut one has to bemindful that the sensibly given is formed in accordance with our categories.

62 Maybe the idea of another sort of cognition underlying our experience of truth can be reformulatedas the idea Fichte entertains when he talks about insight.

63 See Hermann Cohen, Kants Theorie der Erfahrung, 2nd ed. (Berlin: Dmmler, 1885) 217, 267.

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is, in Lasks eyes, simply too subjective and furthermore it presupposes thething-in-itself as the pure manifold which Lask and the other Neo-Kantianswanted to avoid. The second claim is according to Lask still too subjective becauseit implies the claim that we produce the truth. In addition it is unconvincing inLasks view to understand the object not as something that is given but as the sumof right judgments about it. And furthermore this explication is circular because ittakes for granted that our judgments of natural science are true. The option whichLask took in view of these difficulties is that we just experience the formed-mattercomplex in such a way that we acquire the categories which determine the matter.Here, too, we must accept the idea of an immediate experience of values lying inthe object.64 It would be shortsighted to think that Lask was not aware of the factthat the idea of immediate cognition leads to problems.65 But he was nonethelessconvinced that the solution he chose was the best way to save the spirit of Kantsphilosophy against the accusation of subjectivism. This very same motivationguided Lasks theory of judgmentwhich was the primary topic of my paper. Asit turns out, Lask mainly wants to avoid different kinds of subjectivism. Thereforehe takes the object as something that is understood in a certain way before wejudge about it and something on which the truth or falsity of a judgment depends.Lasks view thus seems to offer a fair challenge to Kants theory as well as to otherNeo-Kantian theories.66

Humboldt-Universitt zu Berlin

64 For further discussion we would have to go back to Life and cognition (Leben und Erkenntnis) inThe Logic of Philosophy and the Doctrine of Categories, II, 189ff. It is obvious that Lask isinfluenced here by Fichte (II, 191). It should also be mentioned that Lask alludes here to Kants thirdCritique by taking into account an aesthetical stance concerning an object in order to explain anon-theoretical understanding (II, 205). The idea that Lask wants to ground his whole theory ofcognition on an aesthetic experience as that notion is developed by Kant in his third Critique(though Lask would understand aesthetic experience in a broader sense) is attractive, but I cannotsee a lot textual evidence for this.

65 This becomes clear by looking at Lasks notes to the Doctrine of Judgment, see II, 459.66 Thanks are due to Andrew Chignell and Thomas Teufel for many suggestions and stylistic advice,

to Paul Guyer, Rolf-Peter Horstmann, and the participants of our seminar on Neo-Kantianism atHumboldt-University for constructive discussions. Many thanks are due to Frederick Beiser for hiscomments on my paper.

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